LianLian International will use Ripple xCurrent for China payments
Ripple makes further inroads into China, adding LianLian International as a new regional RippleNet payment hub.
LianLian International, a Hong Kong-based international payment service, has signed an agreement to use the Ripple xCurrent system for payments to China, reports Digital Journal.
xCurrent is one of three core Ripple products, designed to facilitate fast and cheap cross-border payments.
Ripple describes it as the "enterprise software solution that enables banks to instantly settle cross-border payments with end-to-end tracking. Using xCurrent, banks message each other in real-time to confirm payment details prior to initiating the transaction and to confirm delivery once it settles."
LianLian International will be using xCurrent to accept payments from overseas financial institutions using RippleNet and then send them to Chinese recipients. LianLian gets the benefits of an advanced payment solution, and Ripple gets the benefits of a potentially significant RippleNet foothold in China.
"Cross-border payments related to China's e-commerce market reached $1.07 trillion in 2017. There is a huge opportunity to make these payments quicker and more cost-efficient," said Emi Yoshikawa, director of joint venture partnerships, Ripple. "With RippleNet, LianLian will now be able to provide merchants and consumers with on-demand payments, which they weren’t able to before. We look forward to connecting other RippleNet members to LianLian."
Arthur Zhu, LianLian chairman of the board, said, "With RippleNet, we will further enhance [customer] experience and increase our market share by offering customers instant, blockchain-powered payments across the 19 currencies that we currently support. We look forward to working with Ripple to power payment flows between China and RippleNet members in new markets."
Wider uptake around its core function of international money transfers may be good news for Ripple, although it's not 100% clear how the use of Ripple as a commercial solution directly ties into the coin's price.
The news also comes in the wake of another crackdown on cryptocurrency exchanges in China. RippleNet and xCurrent might be making significant inroads, but XRP itself may be largely off the market in China.
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Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author holds ETH, IOTA, ICX, VEN and XLM
